The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  Even around the Kremlin, one Allied officer saw how ‘the soldiers had been allowed to remove whatever they could from burning homes and I saw them carrying booty taken from the unfortunate [residents] because under the guise of looting the burning houses, they plundered everything else’.56

  As they sought out places to live and things to eat and drink, the Allied soldiers broke into a great number of closed and deserted houses and shops. Once the fires broke out, Pion des Loches became concerned for the safety of his men, whom he had ‘rallied as best as I could and charged them to produce the essentials, that is to say, flour, liquor and warm clothes. I myself broke in the doors of a store, and, not without trouble, had a good number of sacks of flour carried off by my cannoneers, who preferred to ransack further and search for gold.’57 The pillaging initially targeted food shops and those selling wine and spirits, but it rapidly spread to engulf private dwellings, public buildings and churches. Physician Kozma Shirovskii of the Moscow Hospital for the Poor and Elizabeth Schroeder, the widow of another physician, both complained that just hours after entering the city the French soldiers robbed them clean, taking silverware, clocks, shirts and cash.58 The famed Russian writer Alexander Herzen’s nurse later told him stories about her experiences during the Allied occupation of Moscow, noting that at first ‘two or three soldiers came and went by our house, and indicated by signs that they wanted a drink. If we gave one of them a little glass of alcohol, he would go away and say “Thank you”, raising his hand to his shako. But when the fires broke out, there was terrible confusion and men began to steal and rob, and one horror followed another.’59 Vasilii Polyanskii recalled that soon after the Allied advanced guard reached the Kremlin, ‘[Allied] soldiers scattered throughout the city, many of them turning to plundering at once. Passing by the deacon’s house, ten men saw a cart packed with belongings and rushed to claim them. Father Mikhail tried to defend his family possessions but the soldier struck him on the head with his sabre and he fell bleeding to the ground; while his wailing family rushed to him, the plunderers took away the horses.’60 According to merchant Andrei Alekseyev, ‘Just as they occupied the Kremlin, [the Allied troops] began to wander throughout Moscow, frequently stopping by our places. On the first occasion they looked around the room and took the icon of the Holy Mother, ripping off its silver frame and trimming …’61 During the night of 15 September the family of Anna Kruglova made a desperate attempt to escape from the city but they were ‘surrounded by a crowd of enemy soldiers who proceeded to rob us. My father was searched: he had a purse with silver coins and a wallet with a considerable sum in paper money; the soldiers took the purse but they fortunately threw away the wallet, which we immediately picked up. My father’s coat was snatched, as were our bags and my mantle.’62 With the fires spreading, the family of Alexander Herzen, who was just six months old, decided to accept an offer of refuge from Pavel Golokhvastov, who was married to Herzen’s aunt, and sought shelter at his stone-built house surrounded by thick walls. So the family and servants moved ‘all together without any distinction’, only to discover, to their horror, that the house was already on fire and ‘flames were licking out of its every window’. Terrified, they took refuge in the large garden behind the house, but ‘had scarcely sat down on a seat, feeling very depressed, when a party of drunken soldiers came up. One of them accosted [Golokhvastov] and tried to take his travelling coat, but the old man resisted, so the soldier drew a large knife [tesak] and caught him a blow right across the face: he carried the scar for the rest of his days.’ Meanwhile, other soldiers mistreated the rest of the family – one soldier snatching the baby Herzen from his nurse’s arms and unfastened his nappy to see whether any money or jewels had been hidden there. ‘Finding none,’ the nurse recalled, ‘he deliberately tore the nappy and threw it away.’63

  ‘A monastery close by the city walls had largely been spared due to the fact that our general was quartered there,’ recalled Brandt. ‘Even so, large inroads were made on the good monks’ larders and cellars. One of the monks was roughly handled when he attempted to prevent this abuse and he told me that such sacrilege could only bring us bad luck …’64 At the Rozhdestvenskii Monastery the fall of darkness also brought unexpected visitors to the frightened priests and nuns: ‘There was knocking on the gates and several voices shouted something, though we could not understand them. So the nuns went to the gates and asked what they wanted. I do not know if the [enemy had] learned a few words or if some Poles were among them, but they managed to say in broken Russian that they needed bread, butter and wine.’ The priest refused to open the gates but had bread thrown over the monastery wall, explaining that ‘there was “no wine and no butter here since you are at the monastery”. But the [enemy soldiers] understood this themselves, saying “monastery” as they departed.’ Less fortunate was the nearby Yegorievskii Monastery, where the Allied soldiers, following the nuns’ refusal to admit them, broke down the gateway and plundered the church.65 With many Muscovites remaining in the city, it was just a matter of time before they became willing or forced guides for the invaders; there were some who readily assisted the Allies in the hope of sharing in their spoils but others were compelled to participate in the looting. The young merchant Andrei Alekseyev recalled that ‘if you encountered the enemy, they forced you to go with them to help carry the loot. I twice had to carry loot for the French, who demanded that I show them where they could find supplies. There was hardly any option but to do it – my life is more precious than anything else.’66

  The degree of disorder and insubordination that seems to have taken over the army can be seen from the experiences of Napoleon’s orderly, Count Roman Soltyk, who was quartered at the house of Countess Musina-Pushkina. Late in the evening of 14 September he had barely gone to bed when he was woken up by a commotion downstairs. As the Russian servants in the house begged him for protection, Soltyk, sabre in hand, went down to see what was happening and was surprised to see grenadiers of the Old Guard plundering the wine cellar. He tried to drive them out by declaring that a general of the imperial suite was quartered at the house but this had no effect on the grenadiers; in fact, one of them raised his fist and threatened the count. Infuriated by such insubordination among the elite soldiers, Soltyk struck the grenadier with the flat of his sabre, felling him to the ground. But it proved to be a mistake. The grenadier’s comrades rushed at Soltyk with their bayonets and he barely managed to escape behind the doors, threatening to shoot the first one who entered the room.67 One may wonder, if the elite grenadiers acted in such a disreputable fashion, what could be expected of the rest of the army?

  15 September

  Early in the morning of 15 September,68 amidst the smouldering fires and continuing disorder, Napoleon, riding his favourite horse l’Emir, made a solemn but hardly triumphant entrance into Moscow, followed by the Old Guard infantry. ‘His entry was not accompanied by that tumult which marks the taking possession of a great city,’ recalled Napoleon’s secretary Claude-François Méneval. ‘No noise disturbed the solitude of the city streets, save only the rumbling of the cannon and the artillery caissons.’69 As they moved from the Dorogomilovskaya bridge along the Arbat boulevard to Znamenka and Nikitskaya streets, and on through to the Kremlin, Napoleon and his entourage admired the city’s beautiful streets and buildings. ‘The city is as large as Paris,’ Napoleon wrote to Empress Marie-Louise, adding a few flourishes along the way: ‘There are 1600 church towers here, and over a thousand beautiful palaces; the city is provided with everything.’70 Writing to his wife later that day, Dominique Larrey also seemed struck by the sights of the city: ‘I have just arrived at the most remote city in the world and can say that this is the largest and most beautiful of the cities I have ever seen, although it is deserted and all of its inhabitants, except for a few unfortunates, have fled.’71 Napoleon’s secretary echoed these sentiments when he observed, ‘Moscow seemed asleep in a deep sleep, like one of those enchanted cities of which we read in Arabian ta
les. The streets through which we passed were lined with houses of fine appearance for the most part, with closed windows and doors. Palaces with colonnades, churches and beautiful buildings glittering with the luxury of Europe and of Asia raised themselves side by side with very modest habitations. All bespoke the ease and wealth of a great city enriched by trade and inhabited by a wealthy and numerous aristocracy.’72 ‘Each of us was stunned by the splendour of the buildings,’ noted a Dutch officer of the Imperial Guard.73

  The French were dismayed by the sight of empty streets, closed windows and smoke billowing over some suburbs. Caulaincourt was struck by the ‘gloomy silence reigning throughout the deserted city. During the whole of our long route, we did not meet a single soul.’ What a dramatic difference from the triumphal entries that Napoleon had made into virtually all the capitals of Europe. ‘Not a single being! What people! It is incredible!’ Napoleon bemoaned. At the sight of the Kremlin, Ségur tells us, ‘this half-Gothic, half-modern palace of the Ruricks and the Romanovs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed disposed to spare, Napoleon’s former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered by this great conquest. “At last, then,” he exclaimed, “I am in Moscow, in the ancient palace of the tsars, in the Kremlin!”’

  On entering the Kremlin, the emperor took up residence in the tsar’s private apartments in the Kremlin palace, which had been designed and built by the famed Italian architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli in the mid-eighteenth century. The baroque-style palace was famous for its bright wall paintings and interior decorations. Inside there were three drawing-rooms and a great hall used by the Russian rulers for arranging receptions and other ceremonies. The lesser rooms were sparsely furnished and the state bedroom lacked even curtains or shutters, prompting Ségur to complain that it was ‘a miserable dwelling for so powerful a sovereign’. Still, the room was well ornamented and its windows opened towards a vista of houses, domes and palaces that stretched southwards over the Moscow river. Napoleon’s mamluk Ali (St-Denis) recalled that

  the emperor had a very large ‘salon’ at the palace of the Kremlin. This room was divided into two parts by a beam or cornice supported by two columns between which one passed from one part to the other. There was a tripod between the wall and the column on either side. The salon was ornamented with gilding, but this had become blackened by time. It was the finest room in the palace in point of richness … The windows of the bedroom opened on the Moscow river. It was a large room, … in the left-hand corner, made by the partition and the side opposite the windows, there was a little cylindrical desk placed diagonally across the corner … the emperor would sit at this desk either to read or to write.74

  Napoleon explored the palace, finding its accommodations pleasing. He had a portrait of the King of Rome hung up on a wall and at around 3pm he ventured out into the city, inspecting the vicinity of the Kremlin, including nearby bridges and the Foundlings Home. Eyewitnesses report that there were no fires in the vicinity of the Kremlin at that time and Napoleon could see only a few places in Zamoskvorechye (south of the Kremlin) where smoke was billowing upwards. Consequently the emperor considered the nocturnal fires to have been inconsequential.

  There is surprisingly little specific information on what Napoleon did between 14 and 17 September.75 We may presume that he was kept occupied as a myriad urgent tasks called for his attention. He would certainly have dealt with logistics, army organization and deployment, as well as governance in France and political affairs in Europe, and so on. He made arrangements to prepare quarters for the troops and asked for a statement of the resources available in the city. Intendant-Général Dumas wrote that his first care upon arriving at the Kremlin was ‘to ascertain what provisions for the subsistence of the army might be found in the public stores and in private houses. I caused the magazines lining the quay between the Kremlin and the Foundlings Home to be opened in my presence. The barrels and sacks of flour and groats in these magazines were estimated at about forty thousand quintals, a valuable resource which might have sufficed for a short stay.’76 Napoleon instructed Marshal Lefebvre to deploy the Old Guard in the Kremlin, where ‘it will be solely responsible for maintaining order’. General Durosnel was appointed as the governor of the city, while Murat and Poniatowski were instructed to secure the Kolomna–Ryazan (in the southeast) and Troitsk–Dimitrov, SegievPosad and Aniskino roads (in the north and northeast). Eugène had headquarters assigned to him in the northwestern suburbs of Moscow and was ordered to guard the road to Tver, while Davout was tasked with guarding the remaining routes.77 That same day the emperor also instructed Bessieres to increase patrolling in the city; the thirty-strong patrols (ten grenadiers and twenty dragoons) were to search various districts and round up all the Russians, who should be delivered to Davout.78 Napoleon believed the moment was ripe to start negotiating with Emperor Alexander and, according to Ségur, he even began drafting peace proposals of. It was around 8pm when Napoleon decided to go to bed, confessing for once that he was exhausted. He was informed about the outbreak of new fires in the suburbs but blamed them on the imprudence of his troops and calmly retired to his chambers.79

  The night-time disorder left a grave imprint on the city. As the news that the city had been abandoned spread through the Grand Armée, many probably shared Michel Combe’s lament: ‘Any illusions we still harboured had disappeared. We bade farewell to our hopes for rest, for a peaceful return home, which was so far away from us. The future held nothing but continued fighting and misery for us. Such were the cruel thoughts that beset our minds at once and manifested themselves in a single distressing exclamation that expressed them best, “The city has been abandoned!” We were stunned by this unexpected blow as if struck by lightning …’80 The fires raging through the night further dampened the mood. Constant reported that, before arriving at the Kremlin, Napoleon ‘sent for Marshal Mortier and threatened both him and the Young Guard [for any continued fires and disorders]. Mortier, in response, showed him some houses covered with iron whose roofing was still perfectly intact. But the emperor pointed out the black smoke that was issuing from them, clenched his hands, and kicked the wretched floor in his bedroom.’81 To Mortier’s credit, his troops did their best to contain the early outbreaks. By the early morning of 15 September the Young Guard had emptied many shops of their merchandise, which was then piled up along the streets and arcades. Mortier drafted a proclamation to the residents of Moscow requiring them to make a report of all the Russians who might be in their homes (whether wounded or in good health), to declare within 24 hours any objects belonging to the state that might have been misappropriated, to reveal any supplies (wheat, flour, spirits, etc.) that were in their homes or storehouses, and to surrender any arms they possessed. In conclusion Mortier noted that ‘the peaceful inhabitants of Moscow need have no fear about the maintenance of their properties and the safety of their persons, if they conform to the provisions of the present proclamation’.82 The Allied authorities also endeavoured to control the fires and began rounding up persons suspected of arson. Thus at around 10am Bourgogne saw General Joseph-Marie Pernetty, commanding the artillery in the 1st Corps, on horseback leading a young man dressed in a sheepskin cape fastened by a red woollen belt. The general ordered Bourgogne to execute the man, who had been caught with a torch setting fire to the palace where Pernetty’s men had been lodged. Bourgogne’s men hesitated to carry out the order: ‘French soldiers are not made for this kind of work, in cold blood. Our blows did not pierce through his sheepskin, and we should have spared his life on account of his youth; moreover, he had not the appearance of a criminal.’ But Pernetty stayed around until his order was carried out, and the poor Russian was shot dead.83

  At about the same time the men of IV Corps finally entered the city from the northwest, but by now their expectations had already been dashed. ‘Moscow seem
ed to be a vast cadaver,’ similar to the devastated ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, ‘though here the impression was even more sepulchral.’84 As they moved deeper into the city, the Italians encountered ‘a mob of soldiers publicly selling and bartering a large quantity of movables they had looted … The number of soldiers increased as we proceeded, carrying on their backs pieces of cloth, loaves of sugar, and whole cases of merchandise …’85 The further the men advanced, the more they found the streets leading to the Merchant Court obstructed by soldiers and beggars carrying with them all kinds of effects, while the streets were littered with discarded merchandise that the pillagers had found least valuable. Around the Merchant Court ‘there were still a number of shops and there soldiers were breaking open cases, and dividing the booty which exceeded their utmost expectations. No shouts, no tumults were heard amidst this horrible scene, so intent was each upon satisfying his rapacity …’ Labaume described the ruins of the Merchant Court where ‘nothing was heard but the crackling of the flames, the din of the smashing in of doors, and then suddenly the appalling crash of a collapsing arch. Cottons, muslins, silks – in fact all kinds of the richest stuffs of Europe and Asia – were being rapidly consumed. Sugar had been piled up in the cellars, with oils, resin, and vitriol, and all these, burning together in the subterranean magazines, vomited torrents of flame through the thick iron gratings. It was a terrifying sight, as such a fearful catastrophe forced upon the most callous mind the conviction that divine justice would one day exact a terrible retribution from those who were the cause of this frightful devastation.’86 Fantin des Odoards, serving in the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Grenadier Regiment of the Old Guard, recalled that his men entered the city ‘less cheerful than before and we all lamented that the huge population with which we had intended to lead a happy life, had largely disappeared … Although since Smolensk, we largely advanced through hot ashes [of villages and towns burnt by the Russians], no one among us imagined that Moscow, the Holy City of Moscow itself, could be set on fire as if it were an ignoble village, but we were clearly misinformed about Russian civilization. At the first news of the fires, the emperor, who apparently shared our concerns, was convinced they were the work of our marauders, and, infuriated, he gave orders to put an end to such practices.’87 Captain B.T. Duverger, the paymaster in Davout’s 1st Corps, entered the town from the Dorogomilovskaya barrier and found the city ‘peaceful and quiet, with no appearance of disorder’. But as he slowly made his way to the Kremlin and the Merchant Court, he witnessed Moscow’s poor ransacking shops in the half-burnt shops and ‘joined with some soldiers of the Guard to expel them. The shops were closed … Far and wide there reigned a lugubrious calm, broken only by the neighing of horses and the tramp of troops down the streets.’88 Similarly, Roos, whose unit was deployed in the eastern suburbs, visited ‘the nearby estate that resembled a monastery’, hoping to refresh himself, and was surprised to find ‘people preoccupied with their daily chores as if the events of yesterday had no effect on them or were not even noticed’.89